The most spiritual, sardonic and ultimately most elusive Beatle, George Harrison was cremated at a private Krishna ceremony yesterday after his "serene" death in Los Angeles from cancer.
The ashes of the 58-year-old guitarist are expected to be taken to India, where he spent some of what he called his most "enlightening" moments and will be scattered on a sacred river.
Outside Beatle "shrines", such as the Abbey Road studio in London, where the group recorded almost all their work, mourners expressed words from mystical lyrics: "George, my guitar will gently weep," read a card taped to the wall.
At Liverpool's Cavern Club, near the original music venue where the Fab Four played 292 times, at Central Park's Strawberry Fields in New York not far from where John Lennon was shot dead in 1980 and in Hamburg where the embryonic Beatles started performing at the Star Club, fans lit candles and lay flowers.
The death of the guitarist also brought tributes from fans as diverse as the Queen, Tony Blair and George W. Bush.